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PubMed2000

Placing healers, healees, and healing into a wider research context.

Healers claim that they can relieve, and often heal, injury and illness against the odds of medical prognosis. Skeptics say that such claims can be accounted for by possible misdiagnosis, uncritical reportage, placebo response, and coincident natural improvement. Their a priori objection is that subjective intention in one person cannot, of itself, affect the physiology and/or mental processes of another person. This a priori objection becomes invalid if experimental evidence, using simultaneous electroencephalographic recordings from two or more brains, has demonstrated that direct brain-to-brain communication can occur. Evidence that something very unusual is occurring during the healing transaction comes from recordings of anomalous electrical and magnetic fields generated by healers when they are in the intention-to-heal mindset.

Electroencephalography↗

PubMed1975

[The relationship between the side of the lesion and the psychopathology of focal lesions of the frontal lobes].

The author studied 36 patients with benign tumors, located in one of the frontal lobes: in 20 cases in the left and in 16 cases in the right lobe. In tumors of the left lobe there were disorders in the motor and initiative side of speech, general inhibition, a decline in the level of generalizing, a prevalence of memory disorders, rather than attention, inertia of mental processes with a preservation of a sense of being ill. Tumors of the right frontal lobe were characterized by an insufficient insight to the illness, euphoria, an absence of a critical understanding of the environment, a prevalence of attention disorders over memory disturbances, a narrowing of the volume of simultaneously perceived information and a tendency towards a confabulatory addition to fragmentarily perceived images.

Brain Neoplasms↗

PubMed1995

Retrieval from semantic memory and its implications for Alzheimer's disease.

In 3 experiments, participants generated category exemplars (e.g., kinds of fruits) while a voice key and computer recorded each response latency relative to the onset of responding. In Experiment 1, mean response latency was faster when participants generated exemplars from smaller categories, suggesting that smaller mental search sets result in faster mean latencies. In Experiment 2, a concurrent secondary task increased mean response latency, suggesting that slowed mental processing results in slower mean latencies. In Experiment 3, the mean response latency of Alzheimer's participants was faster than that of elderly controls, which is consistent with the idea that the semantic memory impairments of Alzheimer's disease patients stem primarily from a reduction in available items (as in Experiment 1) rather than retrieval slowing (as in Experiment 2).

Aged↗

PubMed1990

Changes in spontaneous EEG activity indicate a special kind of information processing in concept learning.

Some findings in the literature suggest that a high amount of spectral power in spontaneous EEG alpha 1 band (7.5-10.0 Hz) may be associated with tasks demanding extensive monitoring of stimulus information and combining features for a match with internal concepts ("exploration"). EEG recordings were obtained from 9 subjects involved in a concept-learning task. They had to match visually presented objects with a concept built up by hypothesis and to respond by pressing a "yes" or "no" key. Epochs of EEG data were analyzed with epoch center-times at 500 and 250 ms before response execution. In the case of "yes" responses, when subjects could match their hypothesis positively with combined features of the presented object increased alpha 1 spectral power was found. Also alpha 1 power was larger immediately after disconfirming feedback than after confirming feedback. Additionally, alpha 2 spectral power (10.5-12.5 Hz) was found to be larger 250 ms after confirming feedback than after disconfirming feedback. It is argued that alpha 1 power seems to reflect those mental processes which are involving in combining features and matching them to a concept in mind. The increase in alpha 2 power after confirming feedback is interpreted in terms of general processing demands imposed during task performance.

Adult↗

PubMed1989

[Emotional stress psychotherapy].

The concept of emotional stress psychotherapy (ESP) is based on the theoretical understanding of mental process as a system of cross-potentiating synergism of consciousness and the unconscious. Therefore, one can regard this kind of treatment as an appeal to the spiritual components of personality arousing its need of self-perfectioning. Owing to this, ESP turns the demands and higher interests creating a personality dominant to oppose the illness with ensuing depression and apathy. In a sense, this method is a qualitative contrast to S. Freud's psychoanalysis digging in the dark compartments of the soul. As a result of treatment of thousands of neurotic patients and those with psychosomatic disorders and alcoholism, the following techniques of ESP were elaborated: rational, shaped as a socratic dialogue; hypnosuggestive comprising individual or collective hypnosis, extremely loaded with emotions; autosuggestive like mental self-regulation and autogenic training filled with specific emotions.

Alcoholism↗

PubMed2000

Cerebral specialization and interhemispheric communication: does the corpus callosum enable the human condition?

The surgical disconnection of the cerebral hemispheres creates an extraordinary opportunity to study basic neurological mechanisms: the organization of the sensory and motors systems, the cortical representation of the perceptual and cognitive processes, the lateralization of function, and, perhaps most importantly, how the divided brain yields clues to the nature of conscious experience. Studies of split-brain patients over the last 40 years have resulted in numerous insights into the processes of perception, attention, memory, language and reasoning abilities. When the constellation of findings is considered as a whole, one sees the cortical arena as a patchwork of specialized processes. When this is considered in the light of new studies on the lateralization of functions, it becomes reasonable to suppose that the corpus callosum has enabled the development of the many specialized systems by allowing the reworking of existing cortical areas while preserving existing functions. Thus, while language emerged in the left hemisphere at the cost of pre-existing perceptual systems, the critical features of the bilaterally present perceptual system were spared in the opposite half-brain. By having the callosum serve as the great communication link between redundant systems, a pre-existing system could be jettisoned as new functions developed in one hemisphere, while the other hemisphere could continue to perform the previous functions for both half-brains. Split-brain studies have also revealed the complex mosaic of mental processes that participate in human cognition. And yet, even though each cerebral hemisphere has its own set of capacities, with the left hemisphere specialized for language and speech and major problem-solving capacities and the right hemisphere specialized for tasks such as facial recognition and attentional monitoring, we all have the subjective experience of feeling totally integrated. Indeed, even though many of these functions have an automatic quality to them and are carried out by the brain prior to our conscious awareness of them, our subjective belief and feeling is that we are in charge of our actions. These phenomena appear to be related to our left hemisphere's interpreter, a device that allows us to construct theories about the relationship between perceived events, actions and feelings.

Animals↗

PubMed2003

[Health promotion--a new approach in psychiatry].

Since its beginnings, the ideology of psychiatry has been determined by the paradigm of a disease model. Practically all psychiatric schools are characterized by their orientation towards a morbid, atypical behaviour. This, however, inevitably narrows the view of the soul of a person. Despite mental illness, resources are always present, these though are not recognized and not utilized. The theory of salutogenesis with its search for health preserving factors has significantly expanded insight on dynamic mental processes. The resulting concept of health promotion attempts to develop patient's self-healing powers by identifying healthy parts and supporting them by instructing patients in active participation. From a health promotion viewpoint, it is necessary to intervene at three levels: 1. At the patient level in the form of guidance and help to actively participate in the healing process. 2. At the staff level in the form of creating healthy work conditions and the promotion of active participation in the creation of this work environment. 3. At the level of psychiatric institutions in the form of promoting efficient communications structures within and between the various services. This paper describes the concept of health promotion in psychiatric services and its possible influence on the reshaping of theory and practice in psychiatry--necessary in the face of current challenges.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1980

[Normality, normativity and marginality].

Different points of view about sense of "normality" for psychiatrists are reviewed. It appears that there is not any satisfactory criterion which defines the limit between normal and abnormal. In the field of mental processes, normality is a valuation which is not independent of the psychiatrist's own values, and of his socio-cultural mode of thinking. One of the consequences of this is the risk of "normativity". Normativity indeed terms the imposition of norms on the subject which correspond to the ideal of the psychiatrist or to the ideal of the society, without respecting the individuality of the subject. It is recalled that social abnormality, or "marginality", i.e. the non-respect of social norms, should not be confused with psychiatric abnormality.

Humans↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[The spatial structure of the alpha rhythm in the healthy human being studied by EEG mapping].

EEG study was conducted in the state of relative rest in 15 healthy subjects with predominance of the alpha rhythm. Data processing was performed on neuromapper ("Neuroscience", Great Britain). Principal attention was paid to the dynamics of spatial-temporal relations of the alpha rhythm. Cyclic changes were shown of the alpha-rhythm amplitude, proceeding with change of high and low amplitudes during seconds, varying in time in various individuals. Three types of spatial distribution of the alpha rhythm over the cortex at the relative rest were obtained: 1) generalized distribution over the cortex with the wavy shift of the frequency fields; 2) formation of delimited local zones of the alpha rhythm, differing by the frequency from the rhythm in other cortical areas; 3) local zone of the low-frequency alpha rhythm in the visual projection zone (18 and 19 fields). Change of the distribution types of the alpha rhythm in the state of rest takes place in the seconds of time intervals, corresponding, according to the literature data, to the proceeding of elementary mental processes.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

The medical theory of Richard Koch II: natural philosophy and history.

Richard Koch(1) became known in the 1920s with works on basic medical theory. Among these publications, the character of medical action and its status within the theory of science was presented as the most important theme. While science is inherently driven by the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, medicine pursues the practical purpose of helping the sick. Therefore, medicine must be seen as an active relationship between a helping and a suffering person. While elucidating this relationship, Koch discusses the fundamental elements of medicine found in natural philosophy and the relationship of medicine to its own history. One of his aims is to unite natural history and the history of ideas without reducing intellectual processes to biological ones. Koch considers free will as something intuitively certain. It must serve as an axiom which will capture human as well as non-human reality. Based on the fact that human free will, considered a psychic quality, evolved out of inanimate matter, Koch grants matter (proto-) psychic qualities. They are evoked through specific constellations of matter. - With regard to history, Koch rejects the notion of constant progress. The history of medicine has provided insights that cannot be surpassed but can be obscured. Historical self-contemplation serves as a means for avoiding any deviations which may prevent medicine from fulfilling its ultimate purpose. Koch connects nature and history through the concept of a unity between natural history and the historical development of medicine. Medicine is considered an especially complex development of a purposive reaction to harmful stimuli, a reaction which can already be encountered in unicellular organisms. Without intending to reduce historical and mental processes to biological ones, Koch sets for himself the aim of gathering different phenomena and presenting them in one encapsulating unity.

History, 20th Century↗

PubMed1999

The challenge of non-invasive cognitive physiology of the human brain: how to negotiate the irrelevant background noise without spoiling the recorded data through electronic averaging.

Brain mechanisms involved in selective attention in humans can be studied by measures of regional blood flow and metabolism (by positron emission tomography) which help identify the various locations with enhanced activities over a period of time of seconds. The physiological measures provided by scalp-recorded brain electrical potentials have a better resolution (milliseconds) and can reveal the actual sequences of distinct neural events and their precise timing. We studied selective attention to sensory inputs from fingers because the brain somatic representations are deployed over the brain convexity under the scalp thereby making it possible to assess distinct stages of cortical processing and representation through their characteristic scalp topographies. In the electrical response to a finger input attended by the subject, the well-known P300 manifests a widespread inhibitory mechanism which is released after a target stimulus has been identified. P300 is preceded by distinct cognitive electrogeneses such as P40, P100 and N140 which can be differentiated from the control (obligatory) profile by superimposition or electronic subtraction. The first cortical response N20 is stable across conditions, suggesting that the first afferent thalamocortical volley is not affected by selective attention. At the next stage of modality-specific cortex in which the sensory features are processed and represented, responses were enhanced (cognitive P40) only a very few milliseconds after arrival of the afferent volley at the cortex, thus documenting a remarkable precocity of attention gain control in the somatic modality. The physiology of selective attention also provides useful cues in relation to non-target inputs which the subject must differentiate in order to perform the task. When having to tell fingers apart, the brain strategy for non-target fingers is not to inhibit or filter them out, but rather to submit their input to several processing operations that are actually enhanced when the discrimination from targets becomes more difficult. While resolving a number of such issues, averaged data cannot disclose the flexibility of brain mechanisms nor the detailed features of cognitive electrogeneses because response variations along time have been ironed out by the bulk treatment. We attempted to address the remarkable versatility of humans in dealing with their sensory environment under ecological conditions by studying single non-averaged responses. We identified distinct cognitive P40, P100, N140 and P300 electrogeneses in spite of the noise by numerically assessing their characteristic scalp topography signatures. Single-trial data suggest reconsiderations of current psychophysiological issues. The study of non-averaged responses can clarify issues raised by averaging studies as illustrated by our recent study of cognitive brain potentials for finger stimuli which remain outside the subject's awareness. This has to do with the physiological basis of the 'cognitive unconscious', that is, current mental processes lying on the fringe or outside of phenomenal awareness and voluntary control, but which can influence ongoing behaviour. Averaged data suggest that, in selective auditory attention, the subject may not notice mild concomitant finger inputs. The study of non-averaged responses documents the optional and independent occurrence of the cognitive P40, P100 and N140 (but not P300) electrogeneses while the finger inputs remain outside phenomenal awareness. These results suggest that the subject unconsciously assigns limited cognitive resources to distinct somatic cortical areas thereby submitting finger inputs to an intermittent curtailed surveillance which can remain on the fringe or outside consciousness. The study of cognitive electrogeneses in single non-averaged responses is making possible a neurophysiology of cognition in real time.

Attention↗

PubMed1985

Logical and conceptual problems of existential psychiatry.

The author has argued that existential psychology and psychiatry are not consistent with existential philosophy, from which they derive their basic concepts. Existential philosophy treats consciousness as an epistemic and ontological absolute while existential psychology and psychiatry acknowledge the existence of unconscious mental processes. It is not possible to base a viable concept of psychodynamic psychotherapy, the nature of transference, or the efficacy of interpretation upon the radical concept of freedom, which is basic to existential philosophy. If psychiatrists wish to experiment with nonpsychoanalytic dynamic psychologies, then it is the author's opinion that the advancement of knowledge would be better served either by using existentialist concepts and principles consistently or by explicitly altering them in clearly defined ways for stated reasons, or by formulating psychodynamic hypotheses that do not lay claim to any foundation in existential philosophy.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Dimensions of everyday eating and drinking episodes.

This study sought to gain conceptual understanding of the situational nature of eating and drinking by analyzing 7 consecutive, qualitative 24-h recalls of foods and beverages consumed from 42 US adults who worked in non-managerial, non-professional positions. Participants were purposively recruited to vary in age, gender, occupation, and household composition. For each recall, participants described foods and beverages consumed, location, people present, thoughts and feelings, and activities occurring at that time. Analysis of verbatim transcripts of interviews identified 1448 eating and drinking episodes. Constant comparative analysis of participants' descriptions for episodes resulted in a conceptual framework that characterizes eating and drinking episodes as holistic and as having eight interconnected dimensions (food and drink, time, location, activities, social setting, mental processes, physical condition, recurrence). Each dimension has multiple features that can be used to describe the episodes. In recalling episodes, participants used conventional labels (e.g. "dinner") as well as modified-conventional labels (e.g. "birthday dinner") and uniquely constructed labels (e.g. "unwind time"). Labels provided insights into the dimensions of the episodes. Results suggest approaches for researchers and practitioners who seek to understand how people manage everyday eating at a time when traditional meal patterns are changing.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits. A meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE: Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is a structured group program that employs mindfulness meditation to alleviate suffering associated with physical, psychosomatic and psychiatric disorders. The program, nonreligious and nonesoteric, is based upon a systematic procedure to develop enhanced awareness of moment-to-moment experience of perceptible mental processes. The approach assumes that greater awareness will provide more veridical perception, reduce negative affect and improve vitality and coping. In the last two decades, a number of research reports appeared that seem to support many of these claims. We performed a comprehensive review and meta-analysis of published and unpublished studies of health-related studies related to MBSR. METHODS: Sixty-four empirical studies were found, but only 20 reports met criteria of acceptable quality or relevance to be included in the meta-analysis. Reports were excluded due to (1) insufficient information about interventions, (2) poor quantitative health evaluation, (3) inadequate statistical analysis, (4) mindfulness not being the central component of intervention, or (5) the setting of intervention or sample composition deviating too widely from the health-related MBSR program. Acceptable studies covered a wide spectrum of clinical populations (e.g., pain, cancer, heart disease, depression, and anxiety), as well as stressed nonclinical groups. Both controlled and observational investigations were included. Standardized measures of physical and mental well-being constituted the dependent variables of the analysis. RESULTS: Overall, both controlled and uncontrolled studies showed similar effect sizes of approximately 0.5 (P<.0001) with homogeneity of distribution. CONCLUSION: Although derived from a relatively small number of studies, these results suggest that MBSR may help a broad range of individuals to cope with their clinical and nonclinical problems.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed2006

Delayed neuropsychiatric syndrome in a child following carbon monoxide poisoning.

Here, we report the case of a five-year-old boy with carbonic monoxide (CO) poisoning. The patient initially recovered after the initiation of hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) therapy, but lethargy as well as visual and gait disturbances appeared two days later. Left hemiparesis and mood lability also subsequently appeared. Slow frontal activity was noted on electroencephalography, while fluid-attenuation inversion recovery and diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed high signal-intensity lesions in the hippocampus and deeper layers of the occipital and frontal cerebral cortex. The neurological symptoms subsided gradually during the 10-day course of HBO therapy, but the left-hand paresis and quadrantic hemianopsia persisted, in association with impaired attention, slow mental processing, and incontinence. Lesions in the globus pallidum were noted on follow-up MRI at 14 days, and cortical lesions became evident as linear, low signal-intensity areas on T1-weighted imaging 4 months after presentation. Delayed neuropsychiatric syndrome in CO poisoning is rare in childhood, although children should be carefully monitored after CO exposure. The finding of cortical laminar necrosis in this patient is quite atypical in CO poisoning, and suggests a broader and previously nonpredicted pathomechanism in this condition.

Carbon Monoxide Poisoning↗

PubMed2005

The psychosocial aspects of obstructive sleep apnea.

The primary events of obstructed breathing during sleep, snoring and obstruction of the upper airway, cause hypoxemia, sleep fragmentation, and daytime sleepiness. Obstructed breathing during sleep can have negative effects on mental processes, behavior, and interpersonal relations. This article reviews some of the cognitive, emotional, and social aspects of obstructive sleep apnea in adults and children. Apnea is associated with cognitive impairments but these are generally mild. Most studies suggest that these impairments improve with CPAP but evidence suggests that some changes may be permanent. Even mild apnea may worsen depression and quality of life. Apnea may have more profound effects in children but the findings are inconclusive. This may be due to difficulty in recognizing sleep apnea in children, the subtle nature of the disorder, the lack of daytime sleepiness, and the imposition of adult norms on children's sleep studies.

Adult↗

PubMed1991

[How people process increasing amounts of information as trials go on: reduction of the trade-off between memory and information-processing in the mental resources].

In solving problems in which the amount of memory required increases during the course of solution the subjects would select such strategies as to cope with the deterioration of performance due to the trade-off between the memory load and the information-processing efficiency. To test the above hypothesis 58 graduates and undergraduates were asked to solve a number-guessing problem. In Experiment I, the subjects' responses were categorized and two different information-processing strategies were extracted; the condensation-of-information strategy and the partiality-decision strategy. These strategies were coded as flow charts. In Experiment II, to clarify the relation between processing and memory strategies, memory load was varied by giving the subjects different amount of cues for the solution. Results suggested that the subjects coped flexibly with the demand of situation by adaptive usage of two-layer solving strategies corresponding to the amount of memory load; one was a memory strategy and the other was a processing strategy.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed2002

Corticosteroid receptors in the brain: gene targeting studies.

Corticosteroids are released by the adrenal cortex with a diurnal rhythm and in response to stressful environmental changes. They not only act on peripheral organs, but also regulate brain physiology, thereby affecting mental processes like emotion and cognition. Here, we discuss the role of the two known corticosteroid receptors--glucocorticoid receptor (GR) and mineralocorticoid receptor (MR)--in the brain by summarizing the results obtained with various genetically modified mouse lines. In these lines, either the GR or the MR gene has been targeted or GR protein levels have been upregulated or downregulated. Analysis of the different lines confirms the importance of GR in the regulation of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis because interference with GR activity activates the HPA axis, whereas increased GR protein levels inhibit HPA axis activity. Genetic downregulation of GR protein levels and inactivation of the GR gene in the brain reduce anxiety-related behavior, which reveals a central role of GR in emotional behavior. Both HPA axis activity and anxiety are modulated by corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH); therefore, we include in the discussion results obtained with genetically modified CRH or CRH receptor mice. We further address the important role of corticosteroid receptors for hippocampal function and integrity. Cellular properties of CA1 neurons are changed, and hippocampal-dependent explicit memory is affected in GR mutant animals. Comparing MR and GR mutant animals suggests the requirement of MR but not GR for dentate gyrus granule cell maintenance. Because an imbalance in glucocorticoid levels is associated with cognitive impairments and mental disorders, the described mouse lines will aid in understanding the mechanisms involved in the pathology of these disorders.

Adrenal Cortex Hormones↗